Week 15

Dearest family and friends!!

the main events of this week were Easter, of course, which was also stake conference, and then also we had exchanges this past week so I spent Tues to Fri in 'center' which downtown, like real, Kiev. So interesting I absolutely loved it, but the whole time it was so hard to have my missionary eyes on instead of "party, carefree college student in a big city" mentality. every other minute i was thinking how i want to put on my party dress and stilettos and hang out with all the young hip people there. its very NYC-fast paced, university students, etc. I think this is my biggest distraction/struggle being a missionary-being missionary minded all the time and just accept that those stilettos are in the closet at home and i can think about them in another 15 months....so yes i loved serving in center Kiev but im grateful not to be assigned there at this time as i try to adjust to the life and expectations of a good missionary. i was happy to come back to my area- and it actually felt like 'coming home' when i came back to our area which was an unexpected feeling, but yes back to our area where life is a little more calm, and hm...suburban...i guess is a way to say it. to give you an idea, if you were to google a map of the Kiev metro/subway our area is between the xarkovskii metro stop and the darneetvii stops. so a little off of the busiest part of Kiev.

and yesterday was stake conference...let me brag for just a minute...i got to go to stake conference of the only stake in eastern Europe. i got to sustain president Thomas S. monsoon as a prophet of God and his twelve apostles in Russian. The area seventy and temple president both gave their talks in Russian even though they are not native speakers. It was just a cool feeling to be surrounded by all these members. strong members. pioneers, really. and they are just the beginning of the stakes and temples that will begin to pop up and flood through this part of the world. Our whole conference was in Russian, which is apparently unusual, but lucky for me because i actually had a chance of understanding it. and i did a pretty good job...i think the quote that i will remember for a long time learning from that conference (you know, one of those moments where the spirit teaches your heart something and there's no chance you'll forget it...) is that for us, every Sunday is Easter! how amazing is the sacrament and the miracle it not only represents but can work in our life each week. yes! lets tell everyone about it!

Our dream plans for Easter didn't work out as far as meeting with our hard core Ukrainian investigator with a very traditional dinner...im pretty sure she was offended this past week by a member so we'll have to do some damage repair this week, but thats okay. Sister Beisinger and i went to Larissa's and had some paska, the traditional Easter bread they eat here, and had a good resurrection/atonement lesson, then we cooked ourselves a very traditional dinner...hamburgers and homemade french fries. its was a treat for us because we never eat out but the elders will probably think thats not special at all since a lot of them eat at the McDonalds here. oh well. we also made a cinnamon cake and made some deliveries to less actives last night. The coolest thing of yesterday was the socially accepted/expected greeting of the day is "christos voskres" then you respond with "vaeestinu voskres"-so you can say to a stranger on the street, "Christ is resurrected" and they will say "indeed, resurrected! my companion loved saying that all day to people because she felt that it was a way to trick people into bearing their testimony and feeling the spirit. It is just way cool that that is part of the culture here.

I did get mail this week, thank you all for the letters-

i got Morgan's, dads, one from the Benson's, and one from Gnome! thank you, i love you all!!

Have a wonderful week!!

Sister little